Personal Library -- High Elder

Author: (French) Balzac
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The ancients said, "Travel ten thousand miles and read ten thousand books." For modern people, traveling ten thousand miles is easy, but reading ten thousand books is difficult. The wheels of technology are sweeping across the world at an astonishing speed. The modern person, busy day and night in front of computers and all kinds of machines, uses wires, fiber optic cables, tracks, or air routes to turn the Earth into a village. Clicking the mouse, we can paste ourselves anywhere in the world. However, in the face of vast civilizations, lacking the foundation of reading ten thousand books, we not only frequently encounter the awkwardness of "meeting face to face but not recognizing each other," but we also constantly accumulate the strangeness that comes from the depths of our hearts. For this, we long for a deeper understanding, a connection of the soul; we long for a return to a way of traveling—before traveling ten thousand miles, first put a few books in our spiritual backpack so that our steps and souls can go further. A spiritual journey does not require "writing essays in youth and exhausting oneself in studies in old age," nor does it require hanging a rope from the ceiling, chipping away at the wall to steal light, or having a red sleeve add fragrance while never putting down the book. A spiritual journey only requires reading a few classics in the leisure of life. Novels, essays, and poems can all be made into soup for the soul; buses, subways, and even the palms of our hands can be our desks. Therefore, we have tailor-made a "pocket library" for busy urban dwellers. Classics are the soul of the library; easy to absorb is the essence of the library; reading anytime, anywhere, and with any heart is the purpose of the library. The selected works in the library are all the timeless classics that have been refined through the trials and tribulations of different civilizations; the illustrations, carefully selected and painstakingly collected from hundreds of rare and private collections, are a true restoration of the essence of the classics. The small format design makes it as clever as a wallet; the special printing process makes every book "filled with the fragrance of hidden incense." Classics are not afraid of time, but life cannot withstand the erosion of "time flies." The charm of classics is better seen than heard. It is better to use them to mend the gaps in our time, to add value to the fragments of our days; it is better to use on-the-go reading anytime, anywhere, to gather wisdom piece by piece, and to understand life in the spiritual journey. Reading classics, with the least expense, to reach the furthest distance of life. The Old Man is one of the most famous works in Balzac's series The Human Comedy, selected by Somerset Maugham as one of the world's ten greatest novels. The story revolves around a young man named Rastignac, who arrives in Paris from the countryside with pure enthusiasm, only to find himself in a corrupt city full of temptation and desire. We were once that innocent young Rastignac, and we might become those timid, oblivious little people, either falling into decline or showing off strength. Anyway, these people, though with unfamiliar French names, all have faces that are either familiar or will become familiar to you. Balzac's The Old Man is a great realistic novel, or perhaps an already fulfilled prophecy.